Shamelessly (an inaccurately) writing on the Ohio Republican Party's blogsite, an unnamed writer posted the following opening to a critique of the $1.9 million bi-partisan study [strikethrough included in the original]:

"Left-wing activists"? Incredible. And wrong. And slimy enough on its own --- never mind the rest of the blog item, which gets even worse, as posted by an unnamed election terrorist from the Ohio GOP --- to merit an immediate apology and retraction by the Ohio Republican party, along with the outing and firing of whoever the official was who wrote it...

For the record, the bi-partisan study, which the cowardly anonymous GOP Buckeye blogger labels as "biased," was the effort of several teams of world-class computer scientists and security experts from both the academic and the corporate worlds.

The teams of testers included corporate contingents from private firms such as Systest Labs, a company which had previously tested, and approved, the very same systems as meeting federal voting systems guidelines on behalf of the federal testing authorities, and as paid for by the voting machine companies themselves. Due to the apparent conflict of interest, their participation was much decried by Election Integrity advocates prior to the release of the findings.

MicroSolved, Inc., was another of the corporate firms that participated, as well as academic teams of computer scientists --- the so-called "left-wing activists," though the GOP blog fails to offer any evidence of the political bias of any team members in its disgraceful slash and burn reply --- who came from University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, and University of California at Santa Barbara. The project manager for the study was the Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus.

Moreover, when announcing the findings of the study at a press conference on Friday, Brunner was joined by Jon Husted, Ohio's Republican House Speaker "to show that the review of the report and any action taken on it will be done in a bipartisan way," according to the Columbus Dispatch. The Toledo Blade also noted Husted's participation in the presser, as meant "to send a signal to Ohioans that any attempt to swiftly react to the report's findings is not partisan."

As well, Brunner chose not to decertify any of the machines (as she could have, and arguably should have), but she instead determined to pass the 1000-page scientific study and her recommendations on to the Republican-majority Ohio General Assembly, along with the state's new Democratic Governor, to be the final arbiters of how the state should proceed in regard to its voting systems.

So the Ohio Secretary of State commissioned a $1.9 million study of the state's voting systems. Before it could commence, the study and its participants were approved by the Republican led Ohio legislature. And then some anonymous GOP blogger decides to undermine election integrity in his/her state by playing the politics of personal destruction because he/she doesn't like the results.

Those results, by the way, include the finding that a simple magnet, or even a personal digital assistant such as a Blackberry, can corrupt the votes of countless thousands of Ohio's voters --- both Democratic and Republican --- and that insiders, such as election officials, can change the results of any election they wish with impunity.

Yet, the democracy-hating Republicanist blogger then goes on to use the comments of several Ohio election officials --- who the blogger claims to be "Democrat" [sic] officials, ironically enough --- which were also included in the report, to make the ridiculous claim that the report was "biased."...

So was it "biased" in favor of Democrats? Apparently not, since the blogger goes on to offer comments of supposed Democratic officials included in it, who disagree with the bi-partisan scientific findings.

Was it "biased" against electronic voting machines? We'll presume that's the implication here (though it has nothing to do with the insipid "left-wing activist" slur) though it has apparently escaped the author of the piece that if anyone would have a bias here, it would be election officials, either Republican or "Democrat," who have put their careers on the line in buying and supporting the use of such machines in the first place. Not to mention Systest labs, which, after being paid by the vendor of the machines originally, was again testing those machines, in no small part against its own original findings.

The genius GOP blogger apparently doesn't understand that. Or, more likely, doesn't wish to point that out and would rather take cheap political shots rather than standing up for a free and fair and accurate election system in the state.

"Keep in mind, these are the views of a bipartisan panel of elections officials who actually get paid to administer elections (and the panel had a Democrat [sic] majority)," writes the anonymous Republican in regard to the snippets of dissent included in the report itself, before scurrilously concluding that Brunner "cooked up" the report:

Obviously, Jennifer Brunner cooked up this report to appease the fringe conspiracy groups who still think - despite dozens of investigations - that Ohio's 2004 presidential election was stolen.

The only thing stolen was $1.6 million of our tax dollars used to fund this colossal waste of paper.

Of course, the democracy-hating author forgot to mention that it was his/her own party's State Legislature that approved the funding for the study. But that, and any of the above other points, also likely didn't serve the agenda of J. Kenneth Blackwell whoever wrote the offensive blog item.

As usual, partisan politics comes before --- way before --- American democracy for Ohio's Republican Party.

And just to be clear, we take strong exception to a great number of the recommendations made by Brunner in light of the report's findings. We outlined a few of those major concerns on Friday in our initial coverage of the study. We have also been critical of her failure, since taking office, to take action on myriad serious and well-documented reports of corruption, malfeasance, misfeasance, and likely election fraud in her state.

But all of those concerns are because we are interested in accountable, transparent, free and fair democracy, not because we feel they will benefit any particular party over another.

We've said, and written, countless times that Election Integrity is not about Right or Left, it's about Right and Wrong. The Ohio Republican Party apparatchiks, and their shameful anonymous blogger, are simply wrong to have posted the item they did, and to have made those particularly outrageous and unsupportable attacks on Brunner and this long overdue bi-partisan study.

As mentioned, those responsible for the posting should be outed and removed from their posts immediately. The piece should be retracted, and an apology should be issued forthwith. But these are Ohio Republicans, so we doubt such responsible, accountable, ethical behavior is even a possibility.

For the record, here's a short video of Brunner explaining the findings and recommendations from the Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards & Testing (EVEREST) report, as posted by her office on Friday...

And to be clear, while Black Box Voting concurs wiht you, Brad, about the problematic recommendations, that does NOT mean we have any disagreement with the findings that the machines are hackable. Again.

The site that ran this election industry-friendly piece, ohiogop.org, is owned by Darren Caywood who also owns midnetmedia.com.

I'm sure John Dean is miles ahead of me here. The blog comes out strongly in favor of the Trust Me elections model, based on the public handing over trust to government and corporate insiders.

I checked to see who blogged the silly piece because I wondered if it might be Rob Pelletier, but apparently it is the Darren Caywood person. Don't know much about his affiliations or why he is so friendly with the vendor position.

My characterization of that blog is not so much that it is a hit piece on Brunner as that it is an industry-shill job. Or maybe just a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about, but the piece has the feel of the kind of disinformation that Diebold's Rob Pelletier did.

thank you Brad and Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner! the only way to stand up to the wingnuts retarded refusal to accept facts is to call them on their criminal stupidity and smash the truth pie in their face over and over and over again.
though Fair elections are worth our every effort!

Now then, WHOIS history shows ohiogop.org (which includes ohiogop.blogs.org for those unsure) was always registered by the Ohio Republican party, in partnership with New Media Communications (Luaptifer is a pro at this research) - and New Media connects to Blackwell, the server in Tennessee or wherever in 2004 for election results, Frank Donatelli, DCI, and various other evil right-wing entities.

The WHOIS on 11/13/07 still shows all this, with an expiration date of 9/29/2008.

Suddenly, the WHOIS for 12/4/07 shows Darren Caywood, and the expiration date is now 9/29/09.

I find this really interesting, and another good reason to keep this guy on our screens.

Ohio’s top election official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, announced Friday that the voting systems that decided the 2004 election in Ohio were rife with “critical security failures.” We speak with Harvey Wasserman, author of “What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election.”

"I mean, the servers for the computation of the Ohio vote count were in the same basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee that houses servers for the Republican National Committee. The programmers who did the stuff for Ken Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State, were Republicans who did websites for the Bush administration. I mean, it’s amazing. "

"Anybody with a simple electronic machine could have gone in there and turned the election, and we know it was done, because the Republican Secretary of State was also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. How do you top that? "

SOS Brunner will be featured guest on our Wed "Voice of the Voters!" program.. discussing findings as well as how arrived at recomendations etc.

VoiceOfTheVoters.Org for internet connection, live on radio in Greater Philadelphia and Southern NJ on
1360AM at 8PM Eastern

Dr. Dan Lopresti of Lehigh University will also be a guest. Dr. Lopresti can skillfully and with knowledge review report vs recommendations....and from the prospective of right and wrong, not political bias

Actually, the RNC had to do a lot more than mess with Ohio's computers in 2004. It required leaving voters in predominantly Democratic precincts standing in the rain for hours while their voting machines sat on trucks. It required playing games with ballot paper thicknesses and confusing lines where precincts were consolidated. It required phone calls to fool or threaten minority voters. And police ticketing vehicles to force the owners to leave the lines to save their cars. But the biggest fraud was done in Cleveland where it was announced that terrorists were threatening the central vote counting. Men purporting to be FBI agents cleared the center so that there were no witnesses as to what happened as they continued counting into the night. Over 71 thousand of the 92 thousand in a heavily Democratic city went to Bush. The FBI said they knew nothing about any terrorist threat or who the people with those badges were. Finally, to this day, there were many more votes simply NEVER counted than Bush's supposed margin of victory. We know that Kerry lost the Electoral College vote in Ohio. But the truth is that in a number of swing states, especially those with no paper trails the exit polls owned by MSM, before the 1:30 am "adjustment" indicated that Kerry had won by well over 4 million popular votes with the likelihood that it went over five million. Expert studies demonstrate that it was statistically impossible for Bush to have won and that some of those "red" states were actually "blue" states.